Beyond Human Perception brings the physiological responses of plants and humans to the same stimulus into dialogue, exploring different forms of perception
In 2020, María Castellanos and Alberto Valverde participated with Beyond Human Perception in Cuando las mariposas del alma baten sus alas, a group exhibition held at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón and curated by Karin Ohlenschläger. The exhibition explored the relationships between art, neuroscience and artificial intelligence, bringing together projects addressing perception, intelligence, learning, memory and the connections between biological and artificial neural networks.
Castellanos and Valverde presented Beyond Human Perception, an installation that compares the physiological responses of plants and humans to the same stimulus: live music. Human brain activity, recorded through EEG, and the electrical oscillations of plants, captured using sensors developed by the artists, are analysed and visualised simultaneously. The work makes it possible to observe patterns, correspondences and differences between the two organisms, proposing alternative approaches to plant perception and sensitivity.
The exhibition brought together seventeen projects by national and international artists and collectives, including Guy Ben-Ary, Clara Boj and Diego Díaz, Daniel Canogar, Ursula Damm, Marco Donnarumma, Justine Emard, Emanuel Gollob, Mario Klingemann, Lancel/Maat, Laramascoto, Lisa Park, Miguel Ángel Rego and Birk Schmithüsen. Through installations, video, photography and participatory works, the exhibition examined how technologies, data, robotics and artificial intelligence can contribute to investigating and questioning our understanding of the mind, perception and different forms of intelligence.